The movement to establish in America a library of Nazi-banned books was started Saturday night with two German Jewish refugees, whose written works had been used to feed the Nazi bonfire in the Opera Square in Berlin on May 10, 1933, serving in the inspirational roles.
The guests of honor were Professor Albert Einstein, world-renowned scientist, and Heinz Liepmann, author of “Murder—Made in Germany.” The plan was launched at a dinner at the Brooklyn Jewish Center, 667 Eastern Parkway, before an assemblage of more than 500 persons, including many prominent non-Jews. Five hundred books of the 20,000 burned and banned in Germany have already been gathered by the Center.
PREDICTS HITLER FALL
Professor Einstein, who heard himself lauded as one “who hates hate and loves love,” predicted the downfall of Hitler’s Germany because its government was based on hatred.
“A community is only as much stabilized as the extent of justice, friendliness and trust upon which she is based,” said the Professor. “For that reason, education leading towards moral action and feeling is more important to the flourishing and prospering community than education for knowledge and practical prowess. On the other hand, every community based on hatred and enmity is predestined to decay; because once the negative impulses of the human soul are strongly formed, they will, of necessity, burst forth in their daily lives, affecting a distrust of one for the other, so that in the end even any unity towards an external, common goal becomes impossible and there results a complete destruction of the community.
CITES SUCCESS OF MOSES
“With this knowledge,” Professor Einstein continued, “did Moses become most successful as a founder of a community and because of the same reason, can Hitler’s Reich have no durance; on the contrary, these wounds, seared on the soul of the German folk, will block any road towards a sound community basis, even after the people will have freed themselves externally.”
Describing the library as “the best protest against barbarism in the world—a protest that will survive long after the leaders of Nazi-Germany are dead and forgotten,” Mr. Liepmann congratulated the American people on their efforts to halt the persecution of the Jews in Germany through the boycott.
LAUDS BOYCOTT
“If America had not instituted the boycott last year and if the leaders of America had not frankly declared themselves against barbarism in my fatherland I believe the sacrifice of human beings, human dignities and human minds would have been much greater,” he said.
Dr. Stephen S. Wise, another speaker on the program, expressed the opinion that Nazism was not a war against the Jews. It was merely an incident to the war of the Nazis, he said, holding that Hitlerism was against civilization, religion, freedom and justice.
PRAISES LIBRARY MOVE
Borough President Raymond V. Ingersoll of Brooklyn, lauded the enterprise as “fitting that these books should be preserved in a country and city free of censorship.”
Other speakers who lauded the movement were Dr. Israel H. Levinthal, rabbi of the Brooklyn Jewish Center, Dr. Samuel Margoshes, the Rev. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, Dr. Will Durant. Also present were Dr. Edwin Markham, Joseph M. Schwartz, president of the center, Kurt Rosenfeld, former minister of Justice in Prussia, Jacob Fish-man and Isidore Fine. Louis J. Gribetz was toastmaster.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
